Doing a brain dump to overcome the overwhelm of creating a product

Hey Reader,

Every year my son’s high school marching band takes a trip and marches in a parade out of town.

The band keeps the kids super busy for the duration of the 5-day trip. The kids went to Disney (Epcot, Hollywood Studios and Magic Kingdom) plus Kennedy Space Center and Cocoa Beach at the beginning of March.

It’s an exhausting (but fun) trip.

When he got home, he opened his computer, saw how much work he had to do, immediately got overwhelmed, closed the computer and went to sleep.

😑

He did get back to it the next day and over the weekend. He’s accountable to his teachers (and to me).

But it makes me think that when we get overwhelmed (let’s say with a digital product 😉), if you’re not accountable to anyone, it will just continue to get pushed by the wayside.

The overwhelm outweighs the potential benefit of creating the product, so it just doesn’t get done.

So what do you do in this case? How can you quiet the overwhelm and get back to it?

It sounds simple, but one of my favorite tactics is a brain dump. Get out a sheet of paper or open a new note on your computer and start writing.

• List everything you can think of that you might need to do
• Look in other systems and make additional notes (in my son’s case, he went to Google Classroom, his email and their online grading system to figure out additional tasks)
• At this point, take a breath. I often feel better just getting it all out
• Then organize and prioritize. What needs to be done first?
• Don’t forget to remove stuff from the list if needed. Not everything that we think needs to be done does (trust me, I know from experience 😆)

I also have a quick Google Sheet that lists out common phases and tasks for creating your digital product. Get it here.​

Do you get overwhelmed? What do you do to get back to the things you want and need to do?

Best,
Rene